Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of British words not widely used in the United States (2nd nomination)

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was keep. Can't sleep, clown will eat me 01:10, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

List of British words not widely used in the United States

transwiki If it is not wiktionary then I am ballerina. Also, who says they are not widely used? How they are selected? (Why there is no "phocodontia" in this list? I don't think it is used very widely in the United States.) If it is said in a book, then such list is most probably a copyvio, because selection of a list is copyrightable, but never mind. This is just a category for wiktionary. `'mikkanarxi 06:06, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

• Delete. As some of the entries demonstrate, what is widely used is a matter of opinion. -Amarkov ^babble 06:10, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
• Keep - Note that the article was nominated for deletion on 28 July 2006. The result of the discussion was keep. It is probably worth reviewing the debate from then: here is a Wikilink :Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of British words not widely used in the United States. WLD 07:12, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
• Keep, but prune ruthlessly to remove words which are used in the US, but with different meanings. AlexTiefling 08:02, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
• Keep, but somebody should go through this and remove some of the bowdlerized definitions. For instance, balls-up has nothing to do with snow balling up in horses' hooves - it actually does come from testicles per three book references I have. The story given in the definition (at least before I deleted it) is a very well-known Victorian bowdlerization, probably propagated by the same people who say the "F" in "SNAFU" actually does mean "fouled". --Charlene 08:58, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
• Keep - List is useful and much easier to read than the 'Different Meanings' article. (Also, "phocodontia" should be in List of English words that are not often used in the UK nor in the United States, however I'm not sure that there's much call for that list - it might be rather long! -- EdJogg 10:03, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
• Keep, useful list, this is not really a dictionary list. This article needs to be cleaned up though. I don't see what's wrong with this list. --Terence Ong _{(C | R)} 14:16, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
• Keep - dont see a reason to delete. Matthew Fenton (talk · contribs · count · email) 14:51, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
• Keep sourced, encyclopaedic. WilyD 15:03, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
• Keep Useful, interesting, referenced somewhat. Edison 15:23, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
• Keep, and hope you can still get into your tutu. - Smerdis of Tlön 16:16, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
  • No way :-) `'mikkanarxi 16:35, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

Comment to all keepers: There is nothing wrong with this list. Y'all people keep forgetting that there are many different places in wikimedia to store information. For example, images are preferrably stored in wikicommons, quotes are in wikiquote. There are also wikisource and wikibooks. For those who are young and don't know history, be it known that previously all this stuff was packed into wikipedia. Just the same, wiktionary is the palce for definitions of word usage (dicdefs). It has category, appendixes, WikiSaurus and perfectly valid storage of useful information. `'mikkanarxi 16:41, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

• Delete From WP:NOT: "Wikipedia is not a dictionary or a usage or jargon guide. Wikipedia articles are not...[l]ists of such definitions...usage guide[s] or slang and idiom guide[s]". This is a list of dictionary defintions. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a dictionary. Definitions of words go in Wiktionary, encyclopaedia articles go in Wikipedia. This is also an unmaintainable list with OR problems. -- IslaySolomon | talk 18:40, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
• Move to wiktionary Ozzykhan 18:42, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Comment Does Wiktionary have a way of keeping a list like this together, or of having the words in a category? A related list of items, or a list of words used differently in two dialects, is in no way a dictionary definition. I have never found useful info in Wiktionary because of the terseness and vagueness of the definitions. Putting each of these terms in a dictionary unlinked would defeat the purpose and make it impossible to find what terms differ between US and British usage. I suppose each term's definition could be mentioned in the related term's entry, but that would still lose the overall list. There is info in a list or category which is lost when the items are separated and scattered. Sometimes the whole is more than the sum of the parts. Edison 20:43, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
• Keep (At the risk of repeating arguments advanced in the first AFD debate) Wikipedia is an international project with both American editors (like me!) and British editors (like, um, well, I know there are some somewhere). If someone from someplace else uses a term you don't understand or uses a term you do understand in a way that seems nonsensical it is nice to not have to go away from Wikipedia to find an explanation. ~ ONUnicorn (Talk / Contribs) 21:11, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

Incidentally, why wern't List of American words not widely used in the United Kingdom, List of words having different meanings in British and American English, American and British English spelling differences, and American and British English pronunciation differences included in the nomination? ~ ONUnicorn (Talk / Contribs) 21:14, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

• Rewrite totally. As it stands the article is BS but not Wiktionary material. Half the words are not generally British but dialectal, some belong in List of words having different meanings in British and American English and others are covered by American and British English spelling differences. Nuttah68 22:42, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
• Delete It's an interesting list, even useful. Just not appropriate for the Wikipedia, as it violates WP:NOT since it's mostly a 'jargon guide'/dicdef. We routinely delete lists of words in other languages, just because this happens to be english doesn't mean it should get special treatment. This sort of information could be somewhat useful, perhaps, in the article on the English language itself, but not in this form. --The Way 00:04, 11 November 2006 (UTC)
• Keep. One of the most useful articles in Wikipedia. OK - potentially one of the ... (etc.) Snalwibma 19:29, 11 November 2006 (UTC)
• Delete per nom and as irrecoverable OR. Cynical 20:26, 11 November 2006 (UTC)
• Comment. There is an ongoing discussion here about a proposed merge and various other issues affecting this article. Matt 23:26, 13 November 2006 (UTC).
• Keep. It's a useful list, and while some of the entries might be dialectic, most are commonly known enough that probably 95% would be instantly understood by anyone in the UK, and quite possibly used, too. Never having been to Wiktionary, I don't know if that wikimedia project can cater for a list like this, but at the end of the day, what harm is it doing being here? Not sure I understand the OR accusations either - is knowing and recording the meanings of words OR? I'm pretty sure most, if not all, of the words listed would be found in OED or Chambers. Would some sources/refs sort the OR objections? If you're really looking for lists of jargon to delete, go check out the internet slang list! Finally, as previously noted, the word "phocodontia" isn't in the list because it should go in the list "words that no-one uses at all, ever". Carre 20:14, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.